Come, enter, all that will,
Behold the ripened Fruit, come gather now your Fill.
Yet still, methinks, we fain would be
Catching at the forbidden Tree,
We would be like the Deity.
When Truth and Falshood, Good and Evil, we
Without the Senses Aid within ourselves would see;
For 'tis God only who can find
All Nature in his Mind.
IV.
(Though we our Thoughts from them perversly drew)
To Things, the Mind's right Object, he it brought:
Like foolish Birds to painted Grapes we flew;
He sought and gather'd for our Use the true;
And when on Heaps the chosen Bunches lay,
He press'd them wisely the mechanic Way,
Till all their Juice did in one Vessel join,
Ferment into a Nourishment Divine,
The thirsty Soul's refreshing Wine.
Who to the Life an exact Piece would make,
Must not from others Work a Copy take;
No, not from Rubens or Vandike;
Much less content himself to make it like
Th' Ideas and the Images which lye
In his own Fancy, or his Memory:
No, he before his Sight must place,
The natural and living Face;
The real Object must command,
Each Judgment of his Eye, and Motion of his Hand.
V.
In which our wandring Predecessors went,
And like th' old Hebrews many Tears did stray,
